Day One Patch

Day-One Patch

Every shipped game has a day-one patch. Planning it before launch day prevents chaos. This skill scopes the patch to only what is safe and necessary, gates it through a lightweight QA pass, and ensures a rollback plan exists before anything ships. It is a mini-sprint — not a hotfix, not a full sprint.

When to run:

• After the gold master build is locked (cert approved or launch candidate tagged)
• When known bugs exist that are too risky to address in the gold master
• When cert feedback requires minor fixes post-submission
• When a pre-launch playtest surfaces must-fix issues after the release gate passed

Day-one patch scope rules:

• Only P1/P2 bugs that are SAFE to fix quickly
• No new features — this is fix-only
• No refactoring — minimum viable change
• Any fix that requires more than 4 hours of dev time belongs in patch 1.1, not day-one

Output: production/releases/day-one-patch-[version].md

Phase 1: Load Release Context

Read:

• project.stage in project.yaml (fallback production/stage.txt) — confirm project is in Release stage
• The most recent file in production/gate-checks/ — read the release gate verdict
• production/qa/bugs/*.md — load all bugs with Status: Open or Fixed — Pending Verification
• production/sprints/ most recent — understand what shipped
• production/security/security-audit-*.md most recent — check for any open security items

If the resolved stage (project.yaml → stage.txt) is not Release or Polish:

"Day-one patch prep is for Release-stage projects. Current stage: [stage]. This skill is not appropriate until you are approaching launch."

Check the premise, do not assume it. This whole skill rests on there being a gold master that already passed a release gate — that premise is what justifies its lightweight QA pass instead of a full one. So verify it rather than inferring it from the stage value:

• No file in production/gate-checks/, or none recording a release-gate verdict: report Release gate: NOT ASSESSED — no gate-check record found. Do not proceed silently. Say plainly that the reduced QA scope below is justified by a gate nobody can find, and ask whether to run /gate-check first or proceed with a full QA pass instead.
• The most recent record is FAIL, CONCERNS or NOT ASSESSED: name it and stop. A day-one patch on top of a build that never passed its gate is not a day-one patch; it is the release gate, arriving late and scoped to the wrong changes.
• project.stage: Release on its own does not establish this. The stage is a claim about where the project is; the gate record is the evidence that it earned the position.

Phase 2: Scope the Patch

Step 2a — Classify open bugs for patch inclusion

For each open bug, evaluate:

Step 2b — Present patch scope to user

Use AskUserQuestion:

• Prompt: "Based on open bugs and cert feedback, here is the proposed day-one patch scope. Does this look right?"
• Show: table of included bugs (ID, severity, description, estimated effort)
• Show: table of deferred bugs (ID, severity, reason deferred)
• Options: [A] Approve this scope / [B] Adjust — I want to add or remove items / [C] No day-one patch needed

If [C]: output "No day-one patch required. Proceed to /launch-checklist." Stop.

Step 2c — Check total scope

Sum estimated effort. If total exceeds 1 day of work:

"⚠️ Patch scope is [N hours] — this exceeds a safe day-one window. Consider deferring lower-priority items to patch 1.1. A bloated day-one patch introduces more risk than it removes."

Use AskUserQuestion to confirm proceeding or reduce scope.

Phase 3: Rollback Plan

Before any code is written, define the rollback procedure. This is non-negotiable.

Spawn release-manager via Agent. Ask them to produce a rollback plan covering:

• How to revert to the gold master build on each target platform
• Platform-specific rollback constraints (some platforms cannot roll back cert builds)
• Who is responsible for triggering the rollback
• What player communication is required if a rollback occurs

Present the rollback plan. Ask: "May I write this rollback plan to production/releases/rollback-plan-[version].md?"

Do not proceed to Phase 4 until the rollback plan is written.

Phase 4: Implement Fixes

For each code fix in the approved scope, spawn a focused implementation loop:

1. Spawn lead-programmer via Agent with:

   • The bug report (exact reproduction steps and root cause if known)
   • The constraint: minimum viable fix only, no cleanup
   • The affected files (from bug report Technical Context section)

   It returns, for each bug, the minimal fix and the files it would change — writing nothing.

2. Ask once, for the whole set: "May I apply these fixes? [BUG-ID → files, one line each]". No code changes before this approval.

3. On yes, hand each approved fix back to lead-programmer (a new Agent call carrying its plan) to implement it and run targeted tests with commands.test from project.yaml, narrowed to the affected suite where the runner allows — never a runner line written from memory. If commands.test is unset, say so and record Tests: NOT RUN — commands.test unset for that bug.

4. Spawn qa-tester via Agent to verify: does the bug reproduce after the fix?

For config/data-only fixes: make the change directly (no programmer agent needed). First ask, naming the file and the change: "May I edit [config file] — [key]: [old value] → [new value]?" Confirm the value changed and re-run any relevant smoke test.

Phase 5: Patch QA Gate

This is a lightweight QA pass — not a full /team-qa. The patch is already QA-approved from the release gate; we are only re-verifying the changed areas.

Spawn qa-lead via Agent with:

• List of all changed files
• List of bugs fixed (with verification status from Phase 4)
• The smoke check scope for the affected systems

Ask qa-lead to determine: Is a targeted smoke check sufficient, or do any fixes touch systems that require a broader regression?

Run the required QA scope:

• Targeted smoke check — run /smoke-check (it takes no system argument)
• Broader regression — run the affected systems' tests in the engine's test root (tests/unit/ and tests/integration/ Godot, Assets/Tests/ Unity, Source/<Module>/Private/Tests/ Unreal — .claude/docs/directory-structure.md) with commands.test from project.yaml, narrowed to the affected suites where the runner allows — never a runner line written from memory. If commands.test is unset, the broader regression is NOT ASSESSED; say so.

QA verdict must be PASS or PASS WITH WARNINGS before proceeding. If FAIL: scope the failing fix out of the day-one patch and defer to 1.1.

If the QA verdict is NOT ASSESSED, that is not a pass. /smoke-check returns it when the suite never ran — no build, no runner, or a result nobody confirmed. Do not proceed on it and do not re-read it as PASS WITH WARNINGS: the warnings value means somebody looked and saw something minor, and this means nobody looked. Either obtain the result (the verdict names what would make it runnable) or defer the fix to 1.1. A day-one patch ships to every player who buys the game on day one, which is the worst possible audience for an unverified change.

Phase 6: Generate Patch Record

markdownCopy code
# Day-One Patch: [Game Name] v[version]

**Date prepared**: [date]
**Target release**: [launch date or "day of launch"]
**Base build**: [gold master tag or commit]
**Patch build**: [patch tag or commit]

---

## Patch Notes (Internal)

### Bugs Fixed
| BUG-ID | Severity | Description | Fix summary |
|--------|----------|-------------|-------------|
| BUG-NNNN | S[1-4] | [description] | [one-line fix] |

### Deferred to 1.1
| BUG-ID | Severity | Description | Reason deferred |
|--------|----------|-------------|-----------------|
| BUG-NNNN | S[1-4] | [description] | [reason] |

---

## QA Sign-Off

**QA scope**: [Targeted smoke / Broader regression]
**Verdict**: [PASS / PASS WITH WARNINGS / NOT ASSESSED]
**QA lead**: qa-lead agent
**Date**: [date]
**Warnings (if any)**: [list or "None"]
**Not assessed (if any)**: [what could not be checked, and why — or "None"]

---

## Rollback Plan

See: `production/releases/rollback-plan-[version].md`

**Trigger condition**: If [N] or more S1 bugs are reported within [X] hours of launch, execute rollback.
**Rollback owner**: [user / producer]

---

## Approvals Required Before Deploy

- [ ] lead-programmer: all fixes reviewed
- [ ] qa-lead: QA gate PASS confirmed
- [ ] producer: deployment timing approved
- [ ] release-manager: platform submission confirmed

---

## Player-Facing Patch Notes

[Draft for community-manager to review before publishing]

[list player-facing changes in plain language]

Ask: "May I write this patch record to production/releases/day-one-patch-[version].md?"

Phase 7: Next Steps

After the patch record is written:

1. Run /patch-notes to generate the player-facing version of the patch notes
2. Run /bug-report verify [BUG-ID] for each fixed bug after the patch is live
3. Run /bug-report close [BUG-ID] for each verified fix
4. Schedule a post-launch review 48–72 hours after launch using /retrospective [milestone-name] for the launch milestone in production/milestones/

If any S1 bugs remain open after the patch:

"⚠️ S1 bugs remain open and were not patched. These are accepted risks. Document them in the rollback plan trigger conditions — if they occur at scale, rollback may be preferable to a follow-up patch."

Use AskUserQuestion:

• Prompt: "Day-one patch complete. What's next?"
• Options:
  • [A] Run /patch-notes — generate player-facing patch notes
  • [B] Run /bug-report to log any issues found post-deploy
  • [C] Stop here

Collaborative Protocol

• Scope discipline is everything — resist scope creep; every addition increases risk
• Rollback plan first, always — a patch without a rollback plan is irresponsible
• Deferred is not forgotten — every deferred bug is listed in the record's "Deferred to 1.1" table; run /bug-triage afterwards to schedule them into the 1.1 sprint
• Player communication is part of the patch — /patch-notes is a required output, not optional